Immigrant Rights: Immigrant Detention
Immigration is growing and increasingly visible. Immigrants and their families carry all their human rights with them when they move. But undocumented immigrants often live in the shadows and are at heightened risk of human rights violations. Amnesty International calls for immigration reform to ensure immigrants are treated with full respect for their human rights and human dignity.
Immigrant Detention Report: Jailed Without Justice
On March 25, 2009 Amnesty International released a new report Jailed without Justice that exposes the immigrant detention system in the United States as broken and unnecessarily costly.
Over 30,000 immigrants are in detention on any given day in the U.S. This is triple the average number detained just ten years ago. Detained immigrants include asylum seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, longtime lawful permanent residents, and the parents of U.S. citizen children. Immigrants can be detained for months or years without any meaningful judicial review despite international human rights standards requiring such review.
It costs about $95 per day to detain someone, while effective alternatives only cost $12 per day. These more affordable alternatives are often not considered.
READ THE: Executive Summary | Key Findings | Download Full Report (PDF 662K)
| Disponible en español aquí (682K)
» Urge the Department of Homeland Security to fix this broken system
RESOURCES: How to File a CRCL Complaint | En Español (PDF 24K)
TAKE ACTION NOW!
© Steve Rubin
Make Detention Standards Enforceable and Use Alternatives to Detention!
Amnesty International is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to make U.S. immigration detention standards enforceable, and to use alternatives to detention in a meaningful way. If the government chooses to detain an immigrant, that person must be held in conditions that meet both domestic and international standards, and before a person is detained, all available alternatives to detention must be considered in each individual case. Take action for immigrant rights »
